


won't show my face here anymore

by PaperRevolution



Series: outer-space mover [8]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Family Angst, Gen, M/M, Miscommunication, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 02:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12831234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperRevolution/pseuds/PaperRevolution
Summary: Space AU. In which everyone is carrying a secret of their own, and Aredhel gives some home truths to her brothers.





	won't show my face here anymore

**Author's Note:**

> 1.) As usual, warnings for discussion of past abuse, although it's pretty vague in this chapter.  
> 2.) I'm surprised that I'm actually managing to keep all these little snapshots fairly chronological (within this story timeline at least; canon timeline be damned) so far. But there it is. This takes place maybe a couple of days after "help me turn a blind eye".

Aredhel is scrolling idly through the newsfeed on her portscreen when the doors to the med bay hiss open and Turgon steps inside. She looks up sharply, automatically shutting off the screen and dropping it with a soft ‘thwap’ onto the blankets.

“I was just—” she starts, immediately on the verge of trying to justify herself, but the look on her brother’s face brings her up short.

“Morning,” Turgon’s tone is neutral, and so is his expression, belying the tension in his shoulders and the stiff briskness of his steps as he approaches her bed. “Did you sleep okay?”

Aredhel nods. She has, in fact, wanted to do nothing but sleep, these past few days.

“Lalwen told me you should be out of here soon,” Turgon sits down neatly on the chair to Aredhel’s right. He does everything neatly, she thinks, and doesn’t know whether she’s infuriated by this or envious of it.

“I can’t wait,” she tells him. “I’m bored.”

This is only half true. She is bored, and the silence of the med bay gives her a prickling feeling deep under her skin, but she isn’t sure she wants to return to life as usual just yet. If she lets herself think too hard about the reasons for this, that prickling feeling intensifies to a burning itch she can’t scratch.

Turgon’s lips quirk in a close-mouthed smile. “Of course you are,” he says, and his posture relaxes a little. “Have you thought about what you’ll do? Will you stay, or will you arrange passage home as soon as you’re well enough?”

She looks at him. What’s the right answer to this question?

“I’m not going home,” she tells him, averting her eyes and pleating the edge of the topmost blanket between her fingers. “It’s not home anymore, anyway.”

“We could arrange for you to stay somewhere el—”

“No,” she interjects, forcing herself to look up at him again. “What would I do? Sit and twiddle my thumbs until the war is out? No, thanks.”

Turgon visibly represses a sigh. “I thought you might say that.”

She lets out a short laugh. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t disappoint. Look, if you’re going to say something about how things turned out the last time I didn’t take your advice—”

It’s Turgon’s turn to interrupt. “Irissë,” he says, and the look on his face is so stern and so familiar that she almost laughs. “We talked about this. I’m not holding that over you. I’m not blaming you for anything. You have every right to make your own decisions.”

Aredhel can’t help it; she lets out a snort of incredulity. “You’ve changed your tune,” she blurts before she can stop herself, “What happened to you while I was away?”

Turgon bristles. “Nothing happened,” he says tersely, “I’m not treating you any differently than I always have.”

For a moment, Aredhel stares at him in disbelief. “You ordered an entire taskforce to protect me! That’s not the behaviour of someone who thinks I’m a grown-ass adult who can make my own choices!”

Her brother’s expression melts, turning sheepish. “I was worried. It’s—dangerous out there.”

“No shit.”

His chest rises and falls with the weight of a sigh. “Look, I understand why you’re angry with me—”

Something inside Aredhel—something stretched taut—springs loose. “I’m not angry with you,” her voice is almost a shout. “I’m angry with me! I went and made a complete fucking fool of myself—”

“Ireth, no—”

“I loved him.”

She hears the words as though it’s someone else saying them. And now they’re pouring out of her, and she can’t make it stop.

“I loved him. Eöl. He was smart and intense and interesting and he made me promises and I fucking fell for it all. I didn’t even think about you, any of you, the first few months I was with him. My whole world was just me and him on this tiny lightless gods-forsaken planet and I didn’t care. Everybody thinks it was this awful thing right from the beginning, but it wasn’t—or, I mean, it was, but I didn’t know it yet. Because I was a fucking idiot. Because I let him manipulate me and by the time I realised what he was like, he was—he was—”

She breaks off, suddenly. Her heart is vibrating in her chest and she feels hollow and weightless.

And Turgon is looking at her like she’s a puzzle he can’t figure out; like he’s out of his depth and he knows it. She watches him open his mouth to speak and then close it again.

She can’t do this. She can’t do this any more than he can.

“Where’s Findekáno?” she changes the subject so abruptly that Turgon does the smallest of double-takes. “How come you’ve come to see me every single day, and I’ve only seen him once, for like five minutes?”

Turgon hesitates fractionally. “Findekáno’s got—other things going on.”

Aredhel narrows her eyes.

“Other things?”

“You’ll have to ask him about it. It isn’t my business to talk about, and anyway I don’t know the details. In fact, I don’t know anything; I’m only inferring…”

Inferring. Who uses words like that in everyday conversation? She shakes her head slightly and wills herself to focus.

“Inferring what, Turukáno? What’s going on?”

But he shakes his head.

“Not my place,” he replies, predictably.

Aredhel resists the urge to groan.

*

The morning she’s discharged from the med bay, Aredhel finds Fingon in the mess hall. He’s got a whole table to himself; just him and his milky coffee and his soggy cereal.

This, in and of itself, is unusual. The sitting alone, that is; not the drowned wheat-puffs.

“Hey,” she says, pulling up a chair beside him, trying not to squint in the too-bright light.

His head bobs up. He’s surprised.

“Hey. I didn’t…I didn’t know you were, um, up and about. How are—how are you doing?”

Aredhel stares.

“Okay. Who the heck are you and what’ve you done with Finno?”

He blinks. Scrubs a hand through his wild jumble of curls.

Unease bubbles in the pit of Aredhel’s stomach. “When did you ditch the braids?” she asks, to fill the silence.

Fingon looks at her wearily. “I didn’t. I mean, I just forgot to redo them.”

It’s all Aredhel can do to keep her mouth from falling open. “What’s going on? And don’t you fucking dare say ‘nothing’. I basically haven’t seen you since—since I got back.”

He shakes his head, takes a sip of coffee to buy himself some time. “It’s really not—”

“Finno.”

She can see him fighting with himself. Head bent, dark brows furrowed, he looks stormy and remote and nothing at all like the Fingon she remembers. For a moment, she thinks he’ll flat-out refuse to talk about whatever it is, but then:

“Something happened,” he says, in a small voice.

She keeps her eyes on him. “What? What happened?”

Fingon exhales slowly. “I don’t think I should—”

“For fuck’s sake, Finno!” Aredhel hadn’t meant to raise her voice. Several people turn briefly to look at her before going back to their breakfasts. “What is it?”

He looks at her, and then away.

“After you left,” his voice is quiet, “The Captain sent some guys—some of his best soldiers—on a diplomatic mission.” He pauses. “They were ambushed. Most of them were killed.” Pause. “Maitimo was taken prisoner by MRGTH. They took him—” for the first time, he falters. “They took him to Angband.”

Aredhel feels as though the floor has vanished from beneath her and she’s suddenly falling.

“I—I got him out of there,” Fingon forces himself to continue. “But he’s—the stuff he’s been through, Ireth, I—”

“You need to be with him,” she nods. Releases a shaky breath. “I get it.”

Fingon looks at her bleakly. “That’s the thing. I haven’t. I haven’t been there for him. Not recently, anyway. We’ve—the past couple of weeks or so, we haven’t even really talked, even though we bunk together now.”

There’s a moment of quiet. Then:

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I don’t know what to do,” says Fingon miserably, “What if I say something that makes things worse? I don’t wanna hurt him.”

Aredhel lets out a noisy breath and shifts so that she’s facing the dark lines of his profile directly. “And you don’t think avoiding him would be hurtful? You don’t think maybe he feels like he’s done something wrong, now? It hasn’t crossed your mind that maybe he thinks you don’t want to be around him because he’s ‘damaged’, or something?”

“Irissë,” says her eldest brother, wide-eyed.

“You don’t get to be the person who finds this ‘hard’,” she pushes on, realising with a flash of grim clarity that this isn’t just about Maedhros. “You don’t get to be the person who checks out because they can’t deal with what’s going on. It didn’t happen to you. None of it happened to you. And the least you can fucking do if you genuinely give a shit is be around and talk to him instead of making him feel like this is somehow his fault!”

Fingon’s expression is frozen. Stricken. Aredhel can see the effort it takes for him to meet her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Ireth,” he tells her, uncharacteristically quiet. “I didn’t want to make you—to make either of you feel that way. I’m just—” He swallows thickly. “He begged me to—to kill him. When I found him. That’s all he kept saying. Over and over. And I can’t—I can’t get that out of my head, and I’m scared. I’m so fucking terrified of losing either of you again.”

And for the first time that Aredhel can remember since their childhood, he begins to cry.

She scoots her chair closer to his and leans forward, wrapping her arms around him. He lets his head fall onto her shoulder, his whole body trembling with silent, shuddering sobs.

Aredhel murmurs words of reassurance, but a hard knot of bitter resentment is forming in her chest. Why is she the one offering comfort? Why is any of this on her? By all rights, shouldn’t she be the one crying on his shoulder?

Eöl was right, she thinks savagely as her brother clings to her. The universe is a shitty, selfish place. Nobody, when you get right down to it, cares about anybody but themselves.


End file.
